(Reuters) — Texas and the District of Columbia sued Alphabet Inc.'s Google on Monday over what they called deceptive location tracking practices that invade users’ privacy.
Two other state attorneys general plan to file lawsuits as well as part of a bipartisan effort to hold Google accountable over privacy, Washington D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine's office said in a statement.
“Google falsely led consumers to believe that changing their account and device settings would allow customers to protect their privacy and control what personal data the company could access,” Mr. Racine said.
“The truth is that contrary to Google’s representations it continues to systematically surveil customers and profit from customer data. Google's bold misrepresentations are a clear violation of consumers’ privacy.”
A Google spokesperson said the “attorneys general are bringing a case based on inaccurate claims and outdated assertions about our settings. We have always built privacy features into our products and provided robust controls for location data. We will vigorously defend ourselves and set the record straight.”
In May 2020, Arizona filed a similar lawsuit against Google over its collection of location data of users. That suit is pending.
(Reuters) – Chief executives of Alphabet Inc.'s Google and Facebook were aware of a deal to carve up part of the online advertising market, according to an amended antitrust complaint filed by Texas and 15 other states against Google.